Stingray feeding tourism in locations like the Cayman Islands has dramatically altered stingray behavior and welfare in ways that are only beginning to be studied.
Stingray tourism welfare is an emerging area of concern as these naturally solitary, bottom-dwelling animals are transformed into semi-habituated animals dependent on tourist handouts. The behavioral alteration from tourism is deep — stingrays at Grand Cayman behave completely differently from wild stingrays, having lost normal foraging and social behaviors through food conditioning. Whether this represents welfare harm in terms of subjective experience is uncertain, but the documented behavioral abnormalities and population-level changes from tourism density warrant concern and better regulation.